The lover raged, Marcian listening with a sad, half-absent look.  Their talk continued for a long time, arid, because of the lateness of the hour, Marcian stayed to sleep in his friend’s house.  Before sunrise on the morrow, Basil sent forth his invitations to all of the Anician blood in Rome.  The first to respond was Gordianus, whose dwelling on the Clivus Scauri stood but a few minutes’ walk away.  Though but a little older than Basil, Gordian had been for several years a husband and a father; he was in much esteem for his worldly qualities, and more highly regarded for the fervour of his religious faith.  A tall, handsome, dignified man, he looked straight before him with frank eyes, and his lips told of spirit tempered by kindliness.  Between him and his relative no great intimacy existed, for their modes of life and of thought were too dissimilar, but each saw the good in the other, and was attracted by it.  Not long ago Gordian had conceived the project of giving his young sister Aemiliana as wife to Basil.  Maximus favoured this design, but his nephew showed no eagerness to carry it out, and Roman gossip presently found a reason for that.  Among the leaders of fashion and of pleasure—­for fashion and pleasure did not fail to revive in Rome soon after the horrors of the siege—­shone a lady named Heliodora, the Greek wife of a little-respected senator, who, favoured by Bessas, rose to the position of City Prefect.  With Heliodora’s character rumour made very free; the captives of her beauty were said to be numerous, and one of the names mentioned by those who loved such scandal was that of the young Basil.  Gordian, finding that there was some ground for this suspicion, spoke no more of the suggested marriage, and it was at his instance that Maximus, ill in Campania, summoned Basil away from the city.  Reports from Surrentum gave reason to hope that this measure had succeeded.  But to-day, as he entered Basil’s house, Gordian’s face wore a troubled look, and there was no warmth in his response to the greeting which met him.

‘You have sent for me, my dear lord,’ he began with grave and distant courtesy, ’to speak of the matter of your inheritance.  Forgive me if I first of all ask you a question—­of more intimate concern.  Is it true that you have taken a wife?’

Basil, in whom fatigue and misery had left little patience, began quivering in every nerve, and made blunt answer: 

‘It is not true, arid she who told you contrived the lie.’

‘You speak of the lady Petronilla,’ pursued Gordian gently.  ’Can I think that she has wilfully deceived me?’

‘Think it not, my lord Gordian,’ returned the other; ’if Petronilla told you I was married, she lied.’

’That is strange indeed.  Listen, I pray you, to the story heard in Rome since Petronilla returned.  It is right that you should hear it just as it comes from her own lips.’

Thereupon Gordian repeated a narrative which would have been substantially true had it not crowned Basil’s love with marriage.  The listener, shaken with violent passion, could scarce wait till the end.